‘What is the meaning of this?’ Blomberg asked.
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Stahl replied. ‘They are your wife and child.’
‘But they’re on Earth.’
Stahl nodded. ‘But by now, your wife is dead and your daughter is now grown up. I’ll wager your wife died of a broken heart, while your daughter grew up possessing no memories of you. This is all because you are here at the behest of the Reich.’ Stahl stepped closer. ‘Blomberg, I know you better than you think. I know of your pain. I know the grief that engulfed you when you were consigned against your will on this mission. I know of your sense of betrayal.’
The metal bar lowered even further. Sensing victory, Stahl offered his hand.
‘But I can bring her back in the flesh for you, Blomberg. You’ll be reunited with your wife and your child.’
Elsa tried to intervene. ‘I know how he’ll reunite you. He’ll kill you just like the others.’
Stahl ignored her. ‘All that the old discredited regime took from you would be restored.’
‘That’s impossible,’ Blomberg whispered. But his words were disconnected with the apparition that stood before him.
‘Nothing is impossible were I am concerned. Here on this world, my will is absolute. All you have to do is to submit.’
‘And if I do, you promise to give Heidi back to me?’ Blomberg asked anxiously.
‘I swear it,’ Stahl said without hesitation. ‘I need you. Our new Reich needs you. The colonists need you. They slumber within the spire waiting for you to awaken them just like Brünnhilde within her ring of fire. Remember the quotation from that Wagnerian legend. “Work the deed that redeems the world.” It applies to you! You will resurrect the colonists from their long hibernation, and then you will tend over them in my name. You will become a legend.’
The confusion was evident upon the doctor’s face. Stahl turned the screw even further.
‘You’d do well to remember how the old Reich took your loyalty for granted,’ he continued. ‘They sent you out here, light years away from her. All you could do was say good-bye, and as a consequence, you weren’t there when Heidi cried for you on her death-bed all those years ago. It was the Reich of Germany that did that to you. It was the Reich of Germany that exploited you. The Reich of Vanaheim, however, will reward your loyalty. Think on that before you decide.’
Elsa sensed that Blomberg’s conversion would soon be complete. She grabbed him by the arm and tried to pull him away. ‘Please don’t listen to him. He only offers you death and destruction.’
Blomberg turned to face Elsa. ‘I’ll have my wife and child back. Everything I lost. The family that was taken away from me because I obeyed my orders like a good little Nazi, all of it will be returned to me.’
‘He’s lying to you,’ Elsa said shaking her head sadly.
‘But what if he’s telling the truth?’
‘I am, Blomberg,’ Stahl insisted. ‘Believe your own eyes.’ He pointed to the bloody apparition which smiled approvingly again.
Elsa let go of Blomberg’s arm. She knew that no arguments from her would now change his mind. But at the same time, deep down, she didn’t blame him. In her mind, she asked herself what she would have done if the Nazi fiend had offered to save Konrad in exchange for her loyalty. Wouldn’t she have submitted too?
The metal bar dropped to the deck, announcing Blomberg’s decision to the world. He stood before the Nazi and bowed his head in submission. ‘What is thy will, my Führer?’
‘Good. Good, good,’ Stahl said as he patted Blomberg on the cheek. He turned his attention towards Elsa, whose forlorn figure now stood alone beneath the cracked window and the titanic tower outside.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The spire’s dark shape appeared in the swirling rain before the sodden Konrad. He was hungry, foot-sore and weary as a result of the forced march he had endured from the vast wreckage site here to the landing sight. He had tramped his way across the sodden landscape, the mud sapping what little energy he had, for hours. What little sunlight that had bathed the alien world had long disappeared until only a ruddy red stain remained along the straight horizon. The rain was as relentless as it was unexpected. It drove painfully into Konrad’s face adding to the planet’s resistance to his presence. At first the rain, the first he had felt since his days in Germany, was refreshing, even intoxicating. The pure drops of water had helped to wash away the sense of helplessness that had gripped him in the aftermath of Mesler’s death. He was on a world light-years away from any help, stranded with a entity totally consumed with hatred and malice. He was marooned upon Hell itself. But deep down, he still wanted to resist. How this resistance would manifest itself he did-not know, but he knew he had to discover the fate of Elsa and the others at the module. The radio-transmission didn’t bode well, but he was determined to find out. This determination drove him back into the rain-storm. But he would not return to the module empty-handed. First, he had climbed back out across the quagmire to return to the rover’s wreck which had nearly sunk without a trace under the acidic mud. The cab remained above the surface, the static from its radio acting as its lonely death rattle. He leapt from the pipe and crawled into the overturned cab. Mud already sloshed about its interior, but he managed to locate the storage-cage behind the cab’s seats. Stepping awkwardly on its smashed dashboard, he managed to break open the cage’s lock and clamber into the mini-arsenal beyond. A host of the latest Schmeisser machine-guns and a formidable collection of stick-grenades welcomed him.
Konrad wiped the rain from his eyes and peered into the gloom. Even though the mighty spire could be seen, the rain continued to hide the module from his view. Puddles of inky water had already developed on the ground in front of him, while more rain-water cascaded down the mound of dirt that covered the mass grave. The Nazi standard still stood, but the flag hung forlornly, soaked and frayed in the wind. But new objects, new landmarks, could now be seen across the water-logged crash-site. The mysterious objects stood like sentries, but they remained silent as they let Konrad approach unchallenged.
He called into the darkness. ‘Elsa! Elsa, where are you?’
He wiped his face again and saw that the sentry-like figures were in fact, large pieces of debris that protruded from the soil like tombstones in front of him. The largest was the exterior hatch from the module’s airlock, its pistons and workings bent and twisted as it appeared that the entire hatch had been wrenched from its housing and discarded like a child’s toy. He then groped for his torch and swept its beam around. Floor and wall panels, and pipes and switches joined the discarded clutter that lay strewn everywhere. A terrible sense of dread ensnared Konrad, its cold touch coiling around him and freezing his limbs. Slogging further through the sodden mud, Konrad searched the debris field. Given his single-minded and relentless efforts, he blindly stumbled over the debris at his feet, but each time he fell, he simply picked himself up, wiped his hands upon his soaked tunic and plunged on.
An even greater light then shone starkly across the land as a racking shaft of lightning cracked. The bright vertical beam exposed the spire from the murk. Its walls were slick with rain, the liquid-sheen adding an organic, almost phallic, touch to the ebony structure, but the lightning strike also illuminated a misshapen object at the foot of the spire. The shape was, of course, the module. But it was no longer the module he knew and recognised. The spherical module had been deformed, compressed, ruined, pulverised. All these words, and more, described its new grossly altered appearance. The previously multi-storied sphere had been squashed together until all traces of its man-made construction were gone.